Carried Home

11-22-25
Carried Home
He sees her first at the edge of the pier where they used to kiss,  
standing ankle-deep in moonlit water that never wets her dress.  
She is exactly twenty-six, the age she was when the fever took her,  
hair still damp from the rain that fell the night she died.  
He is forty-three now, lungs full of city smoke,  
but when she turns and smiles he is nineteen again,  
heart slamming against ribs that suddenly feel too small.
He calls her name (Lila),  
and the gulls answer instead.
Every night she appears somewhere new:  
in the cracked mirror of the corner drugstore,  
on the empty seat of the 11:17 train,  
leaning against the lamppost outside the apartment they once shared.  
She never speaks, only watches him  
with the soft patience of someone who has all the time in the world  
because she is no longer in it.
He starts chasing.
He quits his job, sells the car, empties the savings  
on train tickets, cheap motels, whispered conversations with mediums who smell of gin and pity.  
He learns the geography of her absence:  
the curve of the river where she used to read,  
the boarded-up dance hall where they slow-danced to a jukebox that no longer plays,  
the hospital rooftop where she asked him to promise he would live a long life  
and he lied because he could not imagine one without her in it.
Each time he reaches the place she stands,  
she dissolves like breath on glass,  
leaving only the faint scent of lilacs and hospital soap.
He begins to waste beautifully.  
Cheeks hollow, eyes too bright,  
the way candles burn brightest just before they go out.  
People stop recognizing him.  
He stops recognizing himself in windows  
because the reflection always looks for her over his shoulder.
One November night he finds her in the cemetery,  
sitting on her own grave the way she once sat on his lap.  
The stone reads LILA MARIE CANTRELL, BELOVED, 1994–2017.  
She is barefoot in the frost,  
toes pale and perfect, untouched by three years of earth.
He falls to his knees in the dead grass.  
“I can’t keep doing this,” he says.  
“I can’t keep breathing when you don’t.”  
She drifts closer, close enough that he almost believes  
he can feel the warmth she no longer has.  
Her hand hovers over his cheek,  
a promise and a refusal.
He understands then what he has been running toward.
He lies down on the frozen ground beside her headstone,  
coat open to the cold,  
and begins to speak the way they used to  
when the dark was only dark and not a country she lived in alone.  
He tells her about the songs that still make him cry,  
the way coffee tastes wrong without her stealing sips,  
how he kept her toothbrush like a relic  
until the bristles wore down to nothing from being held, never used.
His voice grows softer as the cold seeps in,  
a welcomed guest at last.  
His limbs grow heavy,  
the stars above him blur into the shape of her face.
Just before the edge,  
he feels it:  
the impossible pressure of her mouth on his,  
not memory but something closer,  
a kiss made of snow and forgiveness and every night he spent reaching.
He smiles into it.  
The last thing he hears is her voice,  
finally, finally,  
clear as the day she said yes on this very spot  
when he asked her to stay forever:
I never left.  
Close your eyes.  
I’m here.
The groundskeeper finds him at dawn,  
curled like a child against the stone,  
frost in his lashes,  
a faint, peaceful smile  
as if someone he loved  
had finally come back  
and carried him home.
This ring holds the energy of the dead. These are the dead that help us to activate our own telepathic and psychic ability. It’s an energy that is a one of a kind. It’s energy that will bond to you. It’s a jump start to supernatural abilities. This is a size 7. You get two rings. Wear together or alone.